Freedom

Right Here, Right Now, Kilmainham Goal, Dublin. 2014

4 Hours Duration

The work titled Freedom, was done as part of Performance Art Live ‘Right Here right Now’ at Kilmainham Goal, Dublin. Conway performed with a group of other artists simultaneously. The brief was to respond to the prison space.

He was dressed in denim, cowboy boots belt and hat, he was locked in one of the prisoner cells where he could only be viewed from a peep hole in the cell door by the audience. It involved him walked around the prison cell with the echo of his boots on the wooden floor, whistling Folson prison blues. He would interact with the audience when the peep hole opened, by way of looking directly at them, or disappearing and reappearing again. He was wearing white contact lenses which gave him an absent appearance.

The lyrics of Folsom Prison blues provided the inspiration for the work. It’s how the inmate imagines freedom, that could never really be realised even in the outside world. Things are so much better in our heads “sometimes” according to Conway.